What’s your team?
This time of year in professional baseball is crunch time. Each team that has a chance to make the playoffs is vying for position and working to put themselves in a strong standing. Fans are desperately watching box scores and scoreboards for their favorite teams. Players that are not performing as we had expected get some boos from their own fans. Breakout players come through in clutch situations and get cheered. A lot is at stake, from the standpoint of professional sports.
Why do we line up in support behind certain teams so strongly in our sports lives and in our real lives? Usually, it is because there is something in that team history and makeup that aligns with our own thoughts and beliefs. Maybe the team you root for is not often a winner, but is making a push this year with a group of players that really believe they can do it. Perhaps your team is a regular winner, that develops and promotes and trades players of the best capability, and they operate like a well-oiled machine year after year. Whatever it is, something speaks to you or aligns to your experiences and beliefs.
Outside of sports we do this too. We align our time and interest with friends and social groups that make us feel comfortable and accepted, based on our background. We yearn as humans to find a tribe of like-minded people that we can feel relaxed and at ease with, without the tension of having to mix with others that feel differently.
When we do this, we naturally put up barriers to understanding each other. It is easier for us to just lock step with the groups we feel most alike, rather than take the time to try to understand the motives and attractions that the other groups have. But that takes time and effort. We instinctively keep the other groups and teams at arm’s length. We often even root against them.
Imagine how powerful we all could be if we took the time to understand each other’s groups and teams, and worked to find a common ground at which we all could be comfortable and aligned. Imagine how we could rally our forces together to solve all types of issues and challenges if we came together. It would be kind of like putting together our social group all-star teams!
Wouldn’t it be nice if we left the sports arenas as the places and chance to be competitive and root for our differences, so that we can get it out of our systems and in real life we can come together in progress and strength?
